“I feel terrible for how we treated you. We never tried to help you, only told you we didn’t have a place for you here anymore. Do you like—are you satisfied by your new job? It pays well, you said?”
“I don’t believe in Judaism. It’s all pretend. None of it is true. There’s no God. It’s founded on a lie.”
“Come now, Rabbi. You know it isn’t as simple as that.”
Simon was awake and screaming, but to Aaron it was wonderful to hear him scream, and to the senior rabbi it didn’t matter that Simon screamed, because the synagogue was empty except for the baby and two men. Even the maintenance team had left. Aaron looked to his son and looked to the senior rabbi.
“All the rituals, the traditions, every time I try to help people. It’s all based on a lie, or at the very least, on something that I know to be untrue. There is no supreme being that operates outside the laws of science. There was no Adam and Eve. You know that. You must. And yet we still teach it as though it’s all true? If I want to help people I should be a psychologist or a judge. A stand-up comedian, maybe. How can I return to this without faith? How do you do it?”
“Aaron. No one has absolute faith.”
“So you don’t believe.”
“Of course I believe. I trust in Adonai. Not in an anthropomorphic God of Genesis, perhaps, who strolls in the Garden, but an Adonai who exists in parallel with the comprehensible, who is part of and apart from science. Asking for a simple understanding will leave you without faith—you know Moshe ben Maimon’s teachings as well as I do.”
“And suffering? The Holocaust? What would Maimonides have said about Hitler?”
“No one has any convincing answers about Hitler, Aaron. But you are as good a man as anyone to help ask the questions. Stop looking for easy answers. That’s for the Christians and atheists. Keep asking questions.”
“Stop it. You’re not listening to me, Rabbi. I don’t believe.”
“Maimonides taught that evil exists where good is absent. God didn’t create Hitler. He allowed Hitler to push aside good. And it is our job as rabbis to fill in those vacuums.”
Teachings were coming back to Aaron, but he pushed them away. “Why is that our job? Why isn’t it your God’s? You’re still not listening to me. I don’t believe in him.”
“I am listening to you, Aaron. And more importantly, I am seeing you. Here.”
Both men looked out at the empty synagogue, then down at the baby by Aaron’s feet.
“Shall we dedicate your Samuel to the Lord?” the senior rabbi said.
“Yes, please,” Aaron said, and they offered up Simon together.
Chapter 53
It was the first time she’d been alone in a week. The construction crew was in her office, but she had the bedroom and parlor floors to herself. Aaron and Simon were out at the Children’s Museum. Antoinette was gone forever. No more detectives or police. She couldn’t hear Daniel or Thela over the sound of the workers upstairs. And she had energy. She didn’t want to nap. She wanted to write, but more than that, she wanted to think, conclude, make sense of that day without needing to color it for someone else’s feelings. What had happened over the last week?
She wanted to mother her child as opposed to pay someone else to.
And now she could.
She wanted to spend her life with Aaron. If it was safe to. She’d heard him out on the stoop talking about what love could accomplish. He’d been talking about her. And he really seemed to mean it. It was unlucky that he was damaged. She loved him, but he was damaged, and she didn’t know what to do.
Except that she wanted to work. No more celebrities. No more witty phrases about strangers’ bodies.
And now she could work. The article she’d published a week before about Bed-Stuy’s history and architecture had been a right step forward, but it had been superficial. It was just words about a place. It had nothing to do with living there. It wasn’t the experience of living there. Now she had her story. She knew Antoinette. She’d met Sara. She’d borne witness to Mr. Jupiter. She understood the situation better. And herself. Now she understood herself. She had a story. Though just because she had a story—a unique, potentially career-making story—should she tell it? It was hers. It had happened in her home. It had changed her life forever. But, really, it belonged to Sara. And to Jupiter’s family. Amelia would be the appropriator. But even as she was going back and forth, she sensed the lack of sincerity in her prevarication. She knew there was something not fully decent about telling this story, but she equally knew she was going to tell it. This was exactly what she’d been looking for. It wasn’t an assignment. It wasn’t entertainment. It mattered, and even if it didn’t belong entirely to her, it was enough hers that she wouldn’t be able to let it go. She just had to figure out how to get the story right. And how to convince the Times or The New Yorker to let her be the one to tell it.
Chapter 54
Amelia had two pages written when she heard the doorbell buzz. Timing was about right. She figured that Aaron was carrying the diaper bag in one hand and the car seat in the other and didn’t have the spare finger to fish out his keys. Time had compressed in front of the keyboard. She was reliving just the single moment of Jupiter talking to the kids on the other side of the doorway. She thought that could be a hook into the piece. Make the whole thing less about race than chaos and generation. Gentrification and Generation. But then she wondered if maybe that was wrong. If it was more about race than generation. Or if chaos and race were the culprits, and she hadn’t yet gotten a handle on why those kids killed Jupiter. Why had they? She still didn’t understand it. Would she ever?
The doorbell buzzed again, and she was excited to see if the museum had animated Simon. She saved the document, spun the computer off her lap, and skipped down the stairs to greet them. It wasn’t until the new interior wooden door was open and her hand was on the outer metal door that she realized what she was looking at. She was looking at the girl again. The girl she’d just been thinking about. She had so many questions for her. She was energized to see her. Amelia had a million questions to fill in the blanks of the week before. To help her start writing an article that made sense. A book.
Sara had been living in Amelia’s mind. But now to see her again could undo all the success of getting her out of the house the first time.
“Come in,” Amelia said.
“Really?”
“Do you have a gun?” Amelia said.
“No.”
“Then come in,” Amelia said. “Neither do I.”
“Really?” Sara said, tugging her sleeves over her wrists.
“Yes.”
“Come in,” Amelia said.
Sara stepped inside.
“Nice house,” Sara said.
“Thanks,” Amelia said.
They looked at each other. Sara looked even younger than she had looked a week ago up in the office.
Amelia hugged Sara.
She hadn’t planned on it, but Sara was so thin and vulnerable, and they had gone through so much together. Amelia had just been thinking about Sara, and then there she was. But Sara stood stiff in Amelia’s arms.
“Can I get you something? A Diet Coke?” Amelia said.
“Okay,” Sara said.
“Come in,” Amelia said.
“Nice house,” Sara said.
“Thanks,” Amelia said. “Some guys are upstairs, construction guys from when you . . . last week.”
“Yeah,” Sara said. “That’s why I’m here.”
Sara was wearing black jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt, and her face was like Simon’s after he’s been crying. Amelia was ashamed she’d shot at this girl. It was the worst thing she’d ever done. And she’d been so proud of it just minutes before. A link of chain was visible by her thumb.
“Why? To apologize?” Amelia said. “Can I get you anything to eat?”
“No,” Sara said. She was tapping her foot, sipping Diet Coke from a glass. Maybe, Amelia thought, it was a mistake t
o give her caffeine.
Amelia looked around the dining room at the inlaid mahogany china cabinet, at the decorative ceiling plasterwork, at the reclaimed wood table and art deco lamps and Jonathan Adler pendant light.
“Fifty thousand dollars isn’t anything to you,” Sara said.
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, I’m here because I can’t cash that check. I don’t have ID except school ID that’s expired, and I can’t cash that check, so I need cash. So I’ve come to say, can I please have the money you gave me in cash?”
Fury wasn’t the right word for what quickly and forcefully came over Amelia, but neither was the need to buy time. It was something between the two if they could be on the same spectrum. Knowing she had the right to be furious. Righteous indignation. Something like when the gun has been on you in the movie, but now you’ve got it and you’re pointing it at the other guy.
“Why would I do that?” Amelia said.
Sara looked up from her glass of Diet Coke.
“You just hugged me,” she said in a voice that seemed to Amelia to be sincerely confused.
“Get out of my house,” Amelia said, feeling like she’d only felt before twice in her life—when she’d found Kevin’s gun under the bed as she’d realized he’d been cheating on her, and when she’d been up in that office with Sara the week before.
“You promised,” Sara said, like the little girl she was.
It hadn’t been part of the plan—Sara’s inability to cash it. Amelia hadn’t thought about that. Amelia had made a mistake but was weighing now if she should be angry at herself for that mistake or congratulate herself for her subconscious fore sight.
“I can’t,” Amelia said. “I can’t just go into a bank and ask for fifty thousand dollars.”
“Why not?” Sara said, revving up. “I did and they told me I needed ID. You have ID, right?”
“Okay: I don’t want to,” Amelia said. “I just gave you that so you’d leave my house. I didn’t have a choice. Now I do.”
“So you’re a liar?”
“To protect my family, sure.”
“What if I trash this place?” Sara said, working herself up, looking around.
Now Amelia had fully transformed into the version of herself from a week ago: “Go for it,” she said. “You couldn’t do close to fifty thousand dollars’ damage. There’s not five thousand dollars of damage here. And you already did your best upstairs, and insurance is paying for all the repairs. Just leave. You’re making a fool of yourself. I thought you were okay, that you were better than they were, and you didn’t want to be stuck with those kids, that you didn’t want to get in trouble with Jupiter’s son, but it’s been a week now. Get out of here.”
“No. Not without my money. I need it for my brother.”
“Your brother,” Amelia meant to say dismissively, but it came out curious.
“I told you. The police beat him. He’s all fucked up. He had a good job at Barnes & Noble’s. But now he’s all fucked up and under arrest and you swore you’d pay me.”
Amelia’s horizons widened.
“What’s his name?” she asked.
A change in perspective and scope. Sara had a brother who’d been working a good job. Sara had been trying to earn money for her brother. Her mother was in jail. Her brother was in the hospital. Her friend had killed Mr. Jupiter. Inside Amelia’s own home.
Amelia hadn’t known how to tell such a scattered and all-encompassing story. But she now saw that Sara was the way in. They could both benefit. Amelia could admit it wasn’t her own story. It was Sara’s, and she—Amelia—was merely in the right place to document it. Gentrification. Poverty. The riots. A smart, undereducated young black girl who never got a break.
“His name is—”
“What if instead of giving you cash, I gave you a job?” Amelia said.
“You already owe it to me in cash,” Sara said, breathing hard. “You fucking swore it.”
Amelia saw, though, that Sara was considering it, and she saw that this was going to make everything possible.
“You can be my research assistant,” Amelia said. “I’ll pay you well. Twenty dollars an hour. That’s the offer. I’m not going to pay you the check in cash. It’s not going to happen. But I can pay you to work. It’ll be a good job. For your résumé, too. To show me your neighborhood. Your life. I’ll write about it. Make you famous. Everyone will know your name. All of Manhattan will know your story and want to take care of you. And I’ll teach you research skills.”
“Fifty.”
“What?”
“Fifty dollars an hour.”
“No.”
“You don’t give a shit,” Sara said. “Fifty dollars an hour.”
“Okay. Fifty dollars an hour. But no higher. You show me your world. Explain why it’s messed up. Introduce me to your brother. And your challenges. Show me where you live. And I take notes. That’s all. I write it down and I tell everyone what you’re up against. This is a good thing.”
“You’ll pay for my ‘challenges.’ ”
“It’s really that you help me research,” Amelia said.
“Fifty dollars an hour, ten hours a day, is five-hundred dollars a day, right? Five days a week is more than a two thousand a week. In cash?”
“Sure,” Amelia said. “Cash.” It would be an investment in the neighborhood. In the community. In both of their careers.
Chapter 55
Bratton took the podium, swaggered up there nose first, smiling, waving, cameras flashing and recording, but Derek only really heard the beginning:
“I’m going to make this quick,” he shouted at the microphones. “I know you have questions, but I want to say a few things quickly. People died. It’s a tragedy. It’s dozens of tragedies. But not as many as could have died, and the city, we’re working through the aftermaths, and there will be changes. There will be arrests of the perpetrators. We will locate police officers in at-risk areas. We’re going to let the little stuff go and start fresh on day zero.”
. . . and then the bit about his father:
“And for Derek Jupiter. His son, Derek Jr., is here today, too. Mr. Jupiter owned his own small electrician business and was doing well for himself in one of the beautiful brownstones on Stuyvesant Avenue in the Stuyvesant Heights neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Mr. Jupiter—an African American—happened to be looking after a white neighbor’s baby son when a gang raided the house and he was murdered trying to protect that boy. Derek Jr., fear not. Your father’s death will not be forgotten. He will live on in the minds of all his friends and neighbors as the upstanding citizen he was. The perpetrator of this heinous crime has already been brought to justice. And we will not forget about you.”
. . . before zoning out again.
A New York Post cover showed the police commissioner standing tall up front while the mayor cowered in his shadow. Or Derek thought that was what he was looking at.
“Derek Jupiter?”
“Yeah?”
Derek wasn’t good at guessing white people’s ages, but she couldn’t have been over twenty-five.
“Thanks for coming! Sorry about your dad. I’d like to offer you my personal condolences.”
“They said they’d arrest me if I didn’t come,” he said.
He’d been on his way to settle what little was left to be settled. He’d finally found Sara late the night before, which had just left him feeling worse. He was only still there at the speech grounds because he wasn’t sure he was allowed to leave yet. The speech was over and no one had told him if he could go.
The woman’s clothes were all shiny. And so was her face. Glossy. She was the whitest, shiniest woman he’d ever met.
“No way,” the woman said. She seemed actually surprised. Like she couldn’t believe the people she worked for were capable of threatening arrest. There was a park bench with bird shit all over it, and she motioned for them to sit, but then she saw all the shit, and they both smiled.
Cops were everywhere, and construction workers were breaking down the bleachers where’d he’d been seated.
“They knocked on my door, said they’d arrest me if I didn’t put on a suit and sit and smile during the speech.”
Sara had been scared of him, but he wasn’t mad at her. Or he had been, but he wasn’t going to do anything about it. He’d asked her who killed Damien. They’d been in Sara’s mother’s house. Sara had been asleep in bed when he got there.
“You still don’t know?” Sara had said. “There was this other fucking redneck in the house. He had guns.”
“But who shot my dad?” he’d said.
“Damien did,” Sara had said.
“Why?” he’d said.
“Because your dad was in Damien’s way I guess,” Sara had said. “No reason. He was fucking crazy.”
“Then it is my fault,” he’d said.
“It’s a nice suit,” the white woman said.
He hadn’t been able to help himself from buttoning it. His father was dead and he didn’t have any friends, but still he’d checked the mirror before coming over. In a suit in the back of a cop car, he’d hoped the neighbors saw. What would they think? That he was arrested, of course. But let them think it. His father had just been killed. There was nothing left to worry about, in terms of the thoughts of others.
“Perfect for television,” the woman said, and smiled.
Was she flirting? She was cute. She was blond and wore glasses and this could be the beginning of turning his back on everything in the entire fucking world that meant anything to him. He could fuck her and murder her and be a real fucking criminal.
“Thanks,” he said, and he smiled, too. It might have been the first time he smiled since he’d been arrested that day in the park.
“Sorry about your dad,” she said, again. She took off her glasses and did something to fix her hair in the back. She had a slight overbite. She put on her glasses again.
“Yeah,” he said. He’d never seen a black girl with an overbite like that. That was the kind of thing that white people didn’t mind having. That he bet she thought looked cute on her.
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